wired blogger critical of Firefox

[il-luzhin]

People may find this an interesting read

http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2007/05/firefox_bloat

My first non-support related post... aah, ain't he cute

[mrgnash]

I'm really getting tired of this. Firefox runs fine for me, and if one considers having an inline spell checkerr and tab states 'bloated', then perhaps they should look into Lynx. Honestly :roll:

[DirtDawg]

Hmm. I thought it was a pretty interesting article, actually. Seems like they're saying extensions and the current demands of webpages (AJAX, Flash, DHTML) are more to blame than Firefox. Besides, I have problems with Firefox sometimes. Loading http://www.ubuntuforums.org, for example, tends to freeze up the entire browser for 5 seconds or so. Doesn't mean Firefox isn't still the best browser out there, just means it's not perfect (which it's not).

[Polygon]

firefox and two plugins make firefox run fast for me.

[PatrickMay16]

I'm really getting tired of this. Firefox runs fine for me, and if one considers having an inline spell checkerr and tab states 'bloated', then perhaps they should look into Lynx. Honestly :roll:

The complaint is not extra features, but the increasing resource usage. Firefox is fast becoming unusable on older computers.

[Polygon]

isnt firefox 3 going to address all of the extra resource usage?

[starcraft.man]

Bah, I agree with mrgnash. I don't see any truth to what was said in the article. I have been using firefox since just after 1.5 was released, on both windows and now the linux platform. I can say that I am very happy with my browsing experience, and I've felt no significant slow downs. In fact, I run with a tonne of custom extensions which I use almost daily they vary from download statusbar, to no scirpt, I've got more than 20 and I am overjoyed to be able to drop them in and out without any regard.

As for the articles claims of an angry undercurrent of firefox users coming up, I haven't seen it... all of my friends who have even half an inkling about tech use firefox and I've never heard one complaint out of them, they love being able to choose any theme they like, any extension they need.

So anyway, I will continue to use firefox because it satisfies all my needs and I haven't seen any slow down.

Note to dirt dawg: no browser is perfect, I don't know why you freeze/slow down on the forums, I get no difference from any other page I browse.

[mrgnash]

The complaint is not extra features, but the increasing resource usage. Firefox is fast becoming unusable on older computers.

Maybe it's time to upgrade those Amstrad CPCs then. Like Starcraft.Man, I'm running a tonne of extensions (not quite 20 though :P ) and slowdown is not an issue... infrequent crashes with flash/streaming content.. I've got a few of those with Firefox 2; but I don't get that with FF3 DPA4.

[jiminycricket]

Hmm. I thought it was a pretty interesting article, actually. Seems like they're saying extensions and the current demands of webpages (AJAX, Flash, DHTML) are more to blame than Firefox. Besides, I have problems with Firefox sometimes. Loading http://www.ubuntuforums.org, for example, tends to freeze up the entire browser for 5 seconds or so. Doesn't mean Firefox isn't still the best browser out there, just means it's not perfect (which it's not).

multithreaded (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/2007/02/threads_suck.html)something or other, from the guy who created Javascript...I find Opera is better at this, especially on low end PCs. However, it is non-free and not as extensible so you take the problems that incurs. Opera also has issues with Flash 9-- or it is blamed on Flash-- and can't load the Totem video plugin.

I know the people who ported Firefox to Haiku and BeOS did help out with some of these issues though.

I have to admit, on a Pentium 3, 384MB of RAM and with the amount of tabs I use, Firefox is unusable on both Windows and Linux. Opera is very fast on Windows, yet slower than Firefox in Linux. Hmm.

I also happen think Firefox 2 is a much better product than even Firefox 1. Perhaps only Phoenix 0.3 was faster, but then you have to deal with missing and buggy features.

[proalan]

Hmm. I thought it was a pretty interesting article, actually. Seems like they're saying extensions and the current demands of webpages (AJAX, Flash, DHTML) are more to blame than Firefox. Besides, I have problems with Firefox sometimes. Loading http://www.ubuntuforums.org, for example, tends to freeze up the entire browser for 5 seconds or so. Doesn't mean Firefox isn't still the best browser out there, just means it's not perfect (which it's not).

Been reading up on ajax recently, i have to agree, firefox only seems to slow down with forums and heavy ajax based sites. The constant hammering of the databases with redundant queries blended and the overhead bandwidth between browser and server as well as doses of javascript doesn't help. I've experimented with vbulletin, just turning off the ajax feature greatly improved performance dramatically. Maybe the admin should consider doing this. You can of course just disable javascript on the client side for the same effect.

I've notice that heavily used forums seem to suffer from downtime. In my personal opinion ajax is the new flash, another fashionable corporate trend.

[PatrickMay16]

Maybe it's time to upgrade those Amstrad CPCs then.

A celeron 733 and 192MB of RAM should be plenty for browsing webpages. At least it was with windows 2000 and firefox 1.0.7.

[fuscia]

firefox is slower than konqueror and opera on both my old desktop and my year old laptop.

[Pasto]

Slowness is not as an issue to me, as is the horrible crashes firefox has with certain ajax-heavy sites like meebo. Even though they are probably bugs from those sites, they seem to trigger firefox bugs and bang, suddenly firefox is no more, no error dialog, nothing. :(

[GSF1200S]

You know, this is one subject I just dont see. At least on my end, im throwing in the BS flag.

Ok, loading on windows was a little slow, even on my laptop listed below... But on Linux?? Pshhh, it takes MAYBE 1-2 secs longer than konqueror, and maybe 1/2 to 1 second longer than Opera...

Crashes? 1 total since Ive started using Firefox, and that was on Windows. Tabs open and switch fast, pages render fast, and now it even has the Speed Dial extension (like Operas Speed Dial).

I understand everyone has different hardware and different expieriences/situations, but problems with Firefox 2 DO NOT EXIST AT THIS USERS END!

[bastiegast]

Firefox sometimes freezes a few seconds when loading a webpage, nothing new for me but I once noticed when my nvidia driver was disabled it freezed more than normally, for example loading digg took ages while freezing the entire browser.

[kragen]

It might be because I use firefox32 on a 64 bit system, but firefox does crash from time to time (epiphany never crashes)

[Sunflower1970]

On my old computer, FF 2 is slow. Much slower than Opera...but when I tried FF 3 alpha4, I noticed that starting the program was much faster, and loading pages was faster too. (it took roughly the same amount of time to open FF3 as it did Opera) I don't have a lot of extensions or themes at all, so that isn't a problem for the slowness.. I think some of the bloatedness will be corrected in this next version (as long as they don't try to add anything else in...)

[Incάnus]

Firefox is becoming less responsive, that's a fact you can measure for yourself, jack, but there's your whole end user concept of "Bloat" again.

The features people love in Firefox can be done fast and indeed are done fast by other browsers. I just wish people would stop acting as though useful features are bad, because it doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.

Useful features are not some kind of universal bad metric where you can draw a graph with useful features on one axis and performance on the other and show this downward slope, regardless of platform, libraries used, the actual codebase or any real world consideration ever.

Pundits who subscribe to that whole idea need to STHU and stop thumbing their stupid sauce into the public eye.

(steam shoots from ears)



firefox is slower than konqueror and opera on both my old desktop and my year old laptop.

Yeah but to be fair you're choosing what are probably the two fastest fully-featured browsers around there, which isn't fair on Firefox

Firefox has a few advantages over both - for instance layout weirdness can get annoying for developers with Opera, and horrendous performance issues with javascript in Konqy abound. Actually, I'm not sure that last one is a good example, FF seems to get pretty bogged down by JS of late.

[super breadfish]

I must admit I found myself agreeing with a lot of that article. I have plenty of RAM so I haven't had any memory problems, but I still don't want to loose resources for things I don't need. Especially when the bloat doesn't work, like the spell checker that can't spell. The bookmark manager is also a bit of a pain. It's a good idea, but the lack of standard things like a rename on right click frustrates me.

Though stability is my main problem. Especially since Firefox 2, I've had regular crashing. Sometimes it doesn't open, sometimes it won't display certain pages, and downloads often crash it.

When I first started using Firefox I found a secure, fast, light and open source browser, but seems these are become increasingly more in question.